Chinnatah stared at the setting suns.
The sky was streaked blood-red, and the Tatooinian suns seemed to be angry eyes looking down from a scowling sky.
He fiercely rubbed his bare thumb against his krayt dragon pearl before touching the cool stone to his burning-hot cheek.
They were dead.
They had all been slaughtered like a pack of womp rats.
Scavengers had already begun to work on their bodies. Their blasters and gaffi sticks were long-gone, probably having been taken by eager Jawas, and various creatures had already begun to pick at the Tuskens' bones.
Chinnatah finally brought his gaze back down to the remains of his mother...at least, the little that was left after she had been mowed down by a moisture farmer's blaster bolt and had most of her flesh stripped down to the bone by hungry Tatooinian creatures.
He knelt down, lightly running his hands over her familiar headdress. The scavengers hadn't taken it yet. Nor, he realized, had Tatooine's inhabitants gotten to the flesh beneath it.
Hesitantly, but unable to prevent himself, Chinnatah slowly removed the headdress. He looked at the face beneath for only a moment before closing his eyes.
The dark man had been right.
His face in no way resembled Arr't'ni's.
He squeezed his eyes closed even tighter.
Gone. Everything he'd known was gone.
...But it couldn't all be gone. Could it?
Surely it was just a bad dream, one he would wake up from at any moment. He would awaken to the smell of roasting dewback, to the feel of coarse cloth beneath him, to the sounds of groaning banthas and Mrekln's taunting, to the sight of his mother aiding the other Tusken females in food preparation...He hadn't lost all that, had he? He couldn't have lost all that!
...But then the smell of acrid fear flooded his flaring nostrils. His own fear. Fear that he would never be a part of his old life again.
It really was all gone.
His past—his mother—
He knew now why he'd never felt like he had belonged, why he had never fit in. He hadn't been meant to.
But knowing that did not ease the pain in his heart.
Arr't'ni was dead, the one who had cared for him, the one he had repaid by turning his back on her. He should have stayed—he could have saved her!
He gnashed his teeth together as he got to his feet, his blue eyes opening with a fire in them that had never been there before. He could have brushed aside all of those cowardly moisture farmers with ease; they would not be able to get past his precise aim or dodge the vast power he could wield. He could have pushed them back as he'd done with Mrekln—they would have been beaten back like sand in the desert wind. He could have tossed their bodies aside like crumpled bags.
Chinnatah had killed a krayt dragon single-handedly. Beating off weapon-toting moisture farmers would be nothing compared to the lethal teeth, horns, and claws of that monstrous creature.
He made a hissing noise, the muscles in his jaw twitching. He could have killed them all. Certainly, they deserved to die.
He stared down at the Tusken corpses, which were strewn carelessly across the desert sand like the bodies of dead animals. He could have saved his mother. Even now, the bloodthirsty urge to avenge her was spreading throughout his body.
He could easily go and make mincemeat of all the nearby villagers. As he stared coldly in the direction of the closest village, he knew the power to do so was flowing through his veins. He could crush their futures, as they had crushed his past.
Suddenly, an icy chill passed down his spine. If he killed them, he would be no better than they were.
Chinnatah took in a haggard breath. Finally, he exhaled, much of his blind rage leaving along with the carbon dioxide. It had not been too long ago that he had been furious at the Tuskens for their slaughter of moisture farmers. Was he now to become a hypocrite?
He gazed sadly upon Arr't'ni's prostrate body, at the sand sweeping across her bones and what remained of her flesh. Surely the loss of someone dear to one's heart should be enough to wipe away all thoughts of being a true hypocrite. It could not be hypocritical to mourn for the death of a loved one...It could not.
He knelt down, craving to physically touch her one last time. Physical touch in Tusken society had always been so rare, seen as a weakness on a planet where Death always met the weak.
And now, never again would Chinnatah be able to hope for her touch, for her approval. For he always had, he realized—but now that he knew it, it was too late.
He made a silent prayer to the gods, and then, trembling, he tried to push all of his emotions to the back of his mind and focus on the practicalities of the matter at hand, though all he yearned to do was fall down beside Arr't'ni's body and never rise again.
Chinnatah stared at her, burning her image into his mind.
Tusken Raiders did not bury their dead, and he knew that Arr't'ni would never have expected or even wanted to be. Sometimes, Tuskens kept the skulls of the dead if in life their owners had been worthy members of the tribe, but Sand People did not waste time which was better spent honing combat skills or raiding unsuspecting homesteads.
Even with all that in mind, Chinnatah knew he could not stand the thought of Arr't'ni's, or Xyd'rr'u's, body being violated even further, nor could he stand the reminder of the blank gaze he knew would be all his foster mother's skull held for him. So he began the job of burial.
When at last he was finished, he ran his hand through the sand on the top of Arr't'ni's grave. It slid through his fingers, just as he had slid away from her life—only to find that she had died because he'd been unfaithful to her.
He had also been very ungrateful toward what he'd been given in life. He vowed to himself that he would never make that mistake again.
His hand had subconsciously made its way to his side, to his collection of stones, but, more specifically, back to the krayt dragon pearl he'd once held such pride in earning.
This part of his life was over; he would need it no longer.
He pressed the stone against his uncovered forehead, then his right cheek, then his left, then his lips. He clenched it in his right hand for a moment. Then he dropped it onto the rapidly cooling sand, which was no longer being heated by the beating suns, and he pressed the pearl deeply into the ground with his thumb.
The stone that had been given to him by Arr't'ni he placed into Xyd'rr'u's grave. The two mates were buried side-by-side, as Chinnatah thought they should be.
He felt the dark man, now present on the desert planet, reaching out toward him, but he rejected the probe. He had one more place to go. A feeling of dread was starting to creep past his shock.
****
So that was it.
As he stared at the outline of the gaderffii and the pile of bones lying on the cavern floor, he realized what had happened, and he felt himself falling to pieces once again.
Vrentlla, devastated at her partner's departure, had left the Tusken clan and retreated with Chinnatah's gaderffii stick into her and Chinnatah's special place so that she could die alone...
Acceptance. What he had received from her so often in life...But what, when it was most important for both of them, he had finally not gotten.
He fell to his knees, curling over his dead symbiotic partner's remains. Tears began to sting his eyes.
He hadn't understood her. He had foolishly thought she would be able to live without him.
He had bonded with her only to break away. He had killed her.
Chinnatah was bowed down, still weeping silently, when the dark man found him.
****
Darth Vader stood in the entrance of the cave for quite some time, maintaining his distance. He could sense the boy's state. The boy was in pain, but he also was feeling intense rage directed toward both himself and those who had killed the Tuskens from his clan.
When at last the boy seemed calmer, Vader spoke. "You would have met their fate as well had you stayed behind."
He received a violent backlash of emotion in the Force from the youth.
"We are not of their kind." The Sith Lord paused, trying to think of a less harsh way to express what the boy needed to realize. Finally, he said carefully, "Tusken Raiders hold themselves back, refusing to interact with other species except in acts of war." He hesitated, not wanting to reveal more of his past but still feeling as if the Force were calling him to do so. "I was once in a position much like yours."
The boy raised his tear-stained face to look at him.
"My situation was almost reversed. I found my mother, who had married a moisture farmer, dead. She was killed by the Tusken Raiders."
The boy stared at him, trembling. He seemed to want to hear more from Vader, but the Sith Lord wanted to say no more on the subject.
"There is nothing more for you here. Come back with me to Coruscant."
Darth Vader began to leave the cave, pausing as he felt the boy's hesitation. He turned back. The child, quivering and looking like the mess Vader was sure he himself had looked all those years ago on Tatooine, briefly pulled together enough strength to place a picture in the Sith Lord's mind of a young bantha with wide, sad brown eyes.
The youth averted his eyes to the bones on the floor.
Of course.
Vader spoke softly, though there was no kindness in his voice. "Take the time you need to bury your bantha, but we need to return to Coruscant soon."
****
Chinnatah made a motion of affirmation, looking upon the bones of his dear friend and companion. He bit down hard on his lip, drawing blood.
He had killed her just as surely as he would have if he'd placed a blaster rifle to her skull. The least he could do was place her bones somewhere that they would not be further violated by Tatooine's inhabitants.
He thought about taking them and burying them outside, but then he decided against the gesture. She would rather stay here, he knew.
After taking out the supplies he'd never removed, Chinnatah placed her bones in the crevice he'd used for storage. Then, one by one, he set the colored rocks in his collection into and in front of the fissure, blocking part of it from easy access. Finally, he put the last rock into place: a smooth, shiny black stone, the first he had ever found.
Now, all that linked him to his past was buried.
He left the cavern after staring at it one last time, heading toward the TIE/Advanced he had arrived on planet in. Vader's ship was nearby—the Sith Lord was waiting to make certain that Chinnatah did indeed leave the planet.
****
Leia scowled. She had just returned to Alderaan from a Senate meeting on Coruscant, and matters had gone rather badly, as the Emperor had managed to pass more of his tyrannical legislation.
She was beginning to walk past her plump, pink-faced Aunt Celly, who was lying down on the couch and indulging in her daily bout of hypochondria as she tugged at her fading and extravagantly styled hair, when her Aunt Tia, who had been reading aloud to Celly, rose from her chair and came swooping toward the princess like a mother bird. "Oh, my darling Leia, the pittins have been dreadfully sad since you left. Taffy and Winkie have been sulking around, and AT-AV absolutely refuses to eat. You must go to the poor little babies and show them that you are doing well."
The princess nodded and suppressed a sigh, about to leave but then turning to ask a question. "Where's Aunt Rouge?"
"Probably having her hair dressed up for dinner in front of that gilt-framed mirror of hers," Tia answered. "She does love her boudoir."
"Yes, of course," Leia said, refraining from sighing once again. She left the room to find the pittins. They had probably gone insane with all the baby-talk Tia gave them (after all, Tia's son Nial had long outgrown baby-talk, so she had to practice on someone) and were sitting wishing for nothing more than an early death. Tia could be overbearing sometimes. Leia was just glad she wasn't in her cousin Nial's shoes.
Speaking of Nial, she should probably go talk to him after seeing the pittins. The youth hated the Empire almost as much as she did, and—while he could never replace Winter as a confidante—Leia usually felt better after talking to him. She could already see his twinkling eyes and hear him saying, "Your dad's gonna help the Empire tumble, I know it! With a little more time—boom! It'll fall! And it will be a mighty tumble indeed!"
Yes. She gave a small smile. He would be able to cheer her up.